Joseph Clarke

Clarke, Joseph, M.D., a distinguished physician, was born in the County of Londonderry in 1758. After receiving his preliminary education in Ireland, he studied at Glasgow and Edinburgh. Endowed with indomitable perseverance, and with abilities of a high order, he worked his way up from a fortune of £400, out of which his education was paid for, to an annual practice in Dublin of £3,000 per annum. From his fee-book we learn that he received £37,252 in fees of £10 and upwards. Under date 11th November 1801, where a one-pound note is entered, he adds, "First of these vile productions." The gold guinea, the hitherto accustomed fee, was worth £1 2s. 9d, Irish. Of 3,847 cases of parturition he attended in his private practice during forty-four years, it is stated that there were but twenty-two deaths, and of these but eight were the result of child-birth. His name is specially connected with the Rotunda Hospital, of which he was for many years master. He died in 1834 in Edinburgh, whither he had gone to read a paper before the British Association.

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The passage of more than one hundred years since The Scotch-Irish in America was first published in 1915 has rendered the book no less fascinating and gripping. Written in a thoroughly accessible way, it tells the story of how the hardy breed of men and women, who in America came to be known as the ‘Scotch-Irish’, was forged in the north of Ireland during the seventeenth century.

Ireland’s Welcome to the Stranger is an American widow’s account of her travels in Ireland in 1844–45 on the eve of the Great Famine. Sailing from New York, she set out to determine the condition of the Irish poor and discover why so many were emigrating to her home country. Mrs Nicholson’s recollections of her tour among the peasantry are still revealing and gripping today. The author returned to Ireland in 1847–49 to help with famine relief and recorded those experiences in the rather harrowing Annals of the Famine in Ireland.